“The Savior loves to restore what you cannot restore; He loves to heal wounds you cannot heal; He loves to fix what has been irreparably broken; He compensates for any unfairness inflicted on you; and He loves to permanently mend even shattered hearts.” (Dale G. Renlund)
Josiah belonged to that special class of special needs students designated as “medically fragile.” Aside from requiring a wheelchair for locomotion, and various devices and gestures for communication in lieu of speech, he also had a certified attendant to assist with needs arising from the limited functionality of his appendages. When I knew him in my days as an educational aide during the school year of 2014-2015, I was myself thirty-five years in age, and thus “midway upon the journey of our life,” as Dante might have said. And yet it was not I, but Josiah, who would, like the Florentine poet, come to tour the world beyond. But if such a thing was to happen at all, I think it was well for it to happen at a time when I was thinking of Dante.
Among all the students in the Life Skills department at Linus Pauling Middle School, Josiah was the most likely to be marked absent, and it is tempting even to say he sometimes seemed marked for absence, as though by Fate. Still, aware as we were of his delicate condition, the handling of him by us, as with the handling of anything coming in a package marked “fragile,” was with care.
It is needful before proceeding, though, for me to pause and address the issue of “inspiration porn” (as it has come to be termed in the language of the late comedian Stella Young). Let it be understood that in my work of close to a decade with both adults and youth having special needs, and in having myself what has been classified as a neurological disability, I believe I can claim to have an even more than usually high sense of moral obligation to affirm the eternal worth and essential humanity of all who might be, or who have been, identified with these unique bodily characteristics. I suppose that, were I to accept the assertion that life is but a protracted chemical reaction in which we are not so much possessors of bodies as products of them, with our very consciousness and sense of identity emerging like a superfluous excrescence from the brain, then I might incline to reduce my fellow creatures to their physical constitutions. But far from endorsing any notion that our identities must proceed from biological bodies, I find the theology of the restored gospel rather on the side of stating quite clearly that our individual identities preceded these earthly bodies we inhabit — and even the earth we inhabit them on! That affirmation alone collides irreconcilably with the view of persons as equatable with the condition in which they find their bodies, and anything beside it affords no basis for assessing character. Between no two individuals can there ever exist a difference in personal worth, as each in fact must be of infinite worth, and we can never eclipse infinity. In short, to fully appreciate the life any person leads, understanding physiological factors, though necessary, is never sufficient.
Even so, witnessing the transition of Josiah’s body from a state of medical fragility to moribund frigidity on the very day before winter break was, for me, as unsettling as it was unexpected. I had been engrossed, this morning of the final day before holiday break, in the happy task of fashioning festive ornaments, to be presented as gifts to the families of our students, at a table in our classroom, together with another instructional aide, Debbie, who was seated directly next to me. Guiding the small red and green beads onto a thin wire, with thin and wiry fingers which had more than once invited comparison with the desiccated digits of Jack Skellington, I was speaking to my seat mate of how obsessed my youngest son had lately been with the celebrated Pumpkin King, when I first took notice of Josiah’s arrival.
I heard his personal nurse, Louise, exclaim from the opposite side of the room: “Josiah, you can’t fall asleep, now! You were awake the whole ride over!” She had, I would later learn, removed the hood of his jacket from his head, and in doing so discovered his eyes to be shut. But the closing of his eyes was not the only thing that caught her own. He had also stopped breathing, and I have since thought that, if one did but know, she herself might well have done likewise, if only for a moment, upon learning this. In a classroom coursing with conviviality, her look of shock was, of course, incongruous, and my attention was arrested by it on the instant.
It only felt like half a second before our supervisor, who was much nearer to the unfolding action, shouted for me to “get over here—NOW!” My legs responded to the summons before I had even summoned myself to any consciousness of their having done so. In fact, none of the ensuing commotion even registered in my awareness until I drew close enough to be struck by the deathly pallor, and almost palpable chill, that had spread entirely over Josiah’s face. It so happened, too, that along with the recent entrance of Josiah and his nurse through the door, which leads directly outside, had come a baleful blast of winter cold across the threshold. It called to mind the morgue I had so many times cleaned as a hospital janitor. Josiah’s mouth, meanwhile, hung open in what looked to me like the very aperture through which a ghost might pass. And never had I so much as supposed, let alone seen, that human flesh could be rendered so near to white in so short a time.
Our supervisor, Stacie (affectionately called Coach Stacie by staff and students alike since her former days of coaching special needs students in modified gym classes), now directed my fellow aide, Amanda, and me to remove Josiah from his wheelchair. We acted as bidden, and, time not permitting us to unfold and lay out for him the luxury of a padded mat, simply laid Josiah on the floor.
It was at this stage that several things happened in a seamless synergy on which I still look back and marvel. Stacie called out for someone to dial 911, whereupon another of our aides, Stephanie, peeked through the doorway of an adjoining room, and with a phone to her ear, said, “I’m calling right now.” Amanda, meanwhile, slid a moveable wall over so as to shield the rest of our students from the disturbing scene, just as I stepped forward and began waving the students, as calmly and encouragingly as I could, out the door which leads into one of the main halls of the school, with the words: “Let’s head to the cafeteria for activity time! We’ve got crafts! We’ve got games! We’ve got fun for all!” But, feeling as though I’d begun, by such language, to verge on conduct better suited to a carnival barker—which seemed not only tacky but tactless under the circumstances—I relented from speech, and simply motioned our (thankfully) compliant throng of students out into the halls, and through the halls, finally, into the cafeteria. Silently, I commended the soul—or, at any rate, the body—of Josiah to the resources of Louise and Stacie.
Meanwhile, as was our custom in Life Skills during the first period of the day, we led the students in a game of hangman. The only differences, today, were the change of venue and the use of a portable easel rather than the customary classroom whiteboard. The irony of our playing such a game as hangman even while a young man’s life hung in the balance as we played was by no means lost on me.
And I began to think about suicide. I do not mean that I considered committing it, but rather that I began to contemplate the concept. And I did so, I believe, because being thus engaged in an activity called “hangman,” particularly in such circumstance as we now were in, prompted me to recall how in our city, earlier that same year, a young woman of high school age had hung herself, to the devastation of many, with her body being discovered (I was later told) by her brother. She and her family had in fact attended church at the same building where I did, although with a different congregation. And I even remembered hearing that same year of a statistic showing suicide had grown to become the second leading cause of death among teenage youth. I reflected on how, according to Camus, there exists only one truly serious philosophical problem, though billions there be who ignore it, and that is suicide. I even began reciting to myself, in a sort of half-whisper, G.K. Chesterton’s “Ballade of Suicide.” I wondered how many youth of around Josiah’s age, had they seen him now lying coldly at the portal of death itself, might have wished to trade him places. I hoped, as I hope to this day, it would have been none of them.
I was abruptly snapped from these ruminations, however, when approached by a member of our faculty, who informed me that the police had arrived, and that they needed to get my account of the morning’s events for their records. As I wended my way from the cafeteria back to Life Skills—the very name of which now seemed almost a travesty of the tragic situation—I caught sight of Debbie, who sat in the hall, grieving openly. Her weeping, I gathered, was that of compounded bereavement, as she had a number of years back personally lost a daughter under circumstances painfully similar to those now confronting us.
“Don’t look at him, Kevin!” she cried out to me as I passed, although I could not, at that moment, unravel the full purport of her plea. Did she feel the sight of him too sacred to intrude upon? Did she simply desire I be decent enough to honor Josiah’s privacy? Did she think the spectacle too frightful or sad to risk having it linger in the mind for all the remaining years of my life? However that might have been, her request was one I gladly honored.
I arrived back to the classroom, found an officer, and proceeded to recount the unfortunate events of the day, as I remembered them, while he transcribed my statement in what could only have been a shorthand fashion. I would later learn that, as a matter of fact, a crew from the fire station, located around the corner from our school, and actually even visible from our track and field area, had arrived on the scene within less than two minutes of receiving the call about our emergency. As it happened, in one of those cosmic “coincidences” which the enlightened will ascribe to Providence, the crew had only just left the station on their way to do fire inspections when the call came in.
But even before their arrival, Stacie and Louise had performed, with impeccable precision, those resuscitative measures which will increase the probability of successful rescue and survival if any earthly thing can. With Louise monitoring, Stacie had administered chest compressions, and with her athletic way, I cannot doubt Josiah benefited from the very best of capable hands. For her part, Stacie would later own that she wept quite freely in the very act of doing the chest compressions, so deep and thoroughgoing was her concern for Josiah’s already imperiled well-being. But for all of this, I had not been present (nor, thankfully, had any of our students), though the facts were eventually related to me.
Substitutes were, in time, called to fill in for us, while we were called in to confer with Mr. Eric Beasley, our principal. Also present was a counselor who, though generally on hand for the emotional and psychological support of the student body, now administered to our good. His first words to us were: “What a great team!” Having heard how our instinctive coordination of efforts came together so naturally and fluidly as to appear like second nature, he added: “You guys were textbook.”
Word as to the outlook for Josiah, though, would not be forthcoming, at least for the moment. We knew only that he was taken to Good Samaritan Regional Medical Center, and was in the care of the ablest physicians on hand. We were admonished to refrain from speculation, and of course to say nothing that would distress any of the students. A celebratory assembly scheduled to happen that day had meanwhile been cancelled, as office staff and administrators continued to wait in readiness, monitoring the situation with Josiah as word arrived, here a little and there a little, throughout the day.
Fortunately, during this school year, Linus Pauling Middle School offered a movie showing after lunch, provided as a wholesome entertainment option for students. Many, if not most, of the special needs students in our care preferred this over the rest of the available options. And under the circumstances, feeling I could do with some diversion, I was even more than typically happy in obliging. On this day, as might be expected for the day just preceding winter break, the film being shown was one of the Christmas subgenre, titled The Polar Express. And I mused, as we sat watching this movie, on one of its scenes involving a train passing through a tunnel. I thought of how frequently those who die, and are then sent back to mortality, report having floated through a tunnel-like passage on their journey into the realm of spirits. I recalled, too, with amusement how Carl Sagan, that shaman of scientism, had attempted to explain away such postmortem tunnel reports as merely being based in the mind reliving the infant’s descent through the birth canal. I knew that the eminent Dr. Sagan had been dead himself since the Christmas season of 1996, and I supposed even he must know by now whether or not the tunnel is the truth. I hoped that the answer had come as a pleasant surprise. But however that was, I now wondered whether Josiah’s own passage through that same tunnel led him, ultimately, into an experience comparable to that of the children in The Polar Express meeting Santa Claus.
Our last meeting of the day with Principal Beasley provided closure, while opening, for at least the majority present, a floodgate of emotions. “Official word from the hospital,” he said, “is that he didn’t make it.” Debbie burst into tears, as did Stacie. “He’s flying with those angels he loved to hear singing, now!” Debbie said. Josiah loved classical music, and was often to be seen falling asleep to some celebrated piece from Bach, Handel, Beethoven, or other master composer. With those bright celestial choirs on high, she felt, he surely now would blend his voice in the angelic ecstasy which was never his portion here to sing aloud by dint of mortal tongue. And I wondered whether she envisioned her own daughter, now long since passed through the veil concealing that world from ours, amid the spirits in glory who would welcome Josiah to his rest.
I returned home at the end of this extraordinary shift, and pulling into the carport felt as if I had seen this home of mine for the ten-thousandth time but appreciated it now only for the first. Josiah, come to think of it, I felt could in a very real sense be said to have beaten me “home.” I related the events of this eventful day to my wife and sons, and it was the oldest of my sons who went straight for the philosophical note, as children remain by the far the best at doing, when he asked his then-favorite question: “But why?” He was not, in this case, asking about medical causes. His question was not how, but why. Why, that is, that a young man should die. Parents, I understand, can become prone to exasperation at what seems a constant, relentless, inexhaustible stream of questions put to them by their children, and they would sometimes like to know how to go about silencing them, if only for an hour or two. Well, I have found out a way. You ask them a question in return, the toughest question you can think of, and challenge them to mull it over. I put the counter-question to my son with words to the effect that he should first (as Alexander Pope said) “the harder reason guess,” and tell me why — again, not how, but why — a person should even live at all to begin with. To this, he hazarded no reply. I am sure that I would still be interested, though, in hearing his answer.
That night, long after my sons had gone to bed, and while I was in the midst of composing a mass email to send out to family members, sharing with them what few details I was then at liberty to disclose concerning the day’s events, I received a phone call. It was none other than Stacie.
She had informed all of us, while still at work, of her intention to stop in at the hospital and pay her respects to Josiah’s family, whose collective anguish we could not imagine. As she now began speaking, I was conscious of an upbeat tone in her voice that startled me by its very sweetness.
She told me of how she arrived at the hospital anticipating an atmosphere of gloom, only to discover Josiah smiling up at her from his bed and giving her the thumbs-up gesture which had been among the favorites in his repertoire of hand signals. She had entered, in fact, not a scene of wailing grief, but of joyful tears and unutterable delight. She spoke of how “our Josiah” was now back in all his glory. Even as our phone call ended, I was only beginning to realize she spoke truth. I thought then, as I have thought since, and will certainly have occasion to think again, of how certain it is that there are “more things in heaven and earth…than are dreamt of in [our] philosophy.”
I was later to learn that Josiah’s body was lying in the refrigerated morgue at the hospital — the very morgue I was once responsible for cleaning, on occasion, while a janitor there — and that the deposition of his body was actually under discussion when one of the attendants discovered a pulse. In the coldest, most inhospitable quarter of the hospital, his heart had resumed beating, fully two hours after it had entirely ceased to beat at all.
It occurred to me that in Josiah we had the rarest kind of martyr. Whereas, traditionally, a martyr has been the man of deep fidelity who gives up his life in this world for a cause he loves, it now seemed to me we had a man of fidelity deeper than death give up his life in the next world for a cause which he loves. History, ancient and modern, affords ample testimony of men leaping cheerfully into flames to claim a martyr’s reward or of a forlorn hope charging into the very mouth of hell with defiant cries. Josiah now, as anyone who has since been privileged to see him awake will testify, spends many an hour with a grin upon his face, which he now wears, as I see it, like a medal of meritorious valor in the face, not of death, but of life.
There are those who speak of what makes life worth living. As well might a tale be told of how King Midas turned gold into gold, or of how Rumpelstiltskin made straw, straw. Nothing “makes” life worth living for the very simple reason that it is already worth living, and a thing cannot be made what it already is. It is only certain lifestyles which are not worth living. All one can really do is discover the worth of living life— a worth that was always there to discover, and always will be.
Josiah was welcomed back to school with fitting fanfare. The assembly which had been cancelled on the day of his death was held upon his return to the school, not long after the end of winter break, and his family was in attendance with him. The officers and emergency medical teams who assisted him were also present, and honored at the assembly for their heroic efforts. The burst of exuberant applause when Josiah first appeared, and the announcement was made that he yet lived and was in good health, caused the room to vibrate with delight. It was not the mere sound of robust and cheerful shouting, clapping, or thunder of rhythmically stomping feet, but the meaning behind the combined force of these sounds, which must be felt to be understood. But those who are not past feeling understand how well the poet Longfellow wrote that—
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
A report on the celebratory occasion appeared in the January 9, 2015, edition of the Corvallis Gazette-Times, in a simply but tellingly titled article, “The boy who lived.” Reading it, I was struck by the following lines:
Doctors still don’t know exactly what caused Josiah’s heart to fail — or exactly how he was able to come back from his two-hour brush with death. The word “miracle” came up a lot in conversations with the medical staff, Josiah’s sister said after the assembly, and one physician went further than that.
“He said, ‘It’s supernatural — this doesn’t happen.’”
When Josiah left this world, if only for a few hours, he saw that which this world only represents. “That which is earthly,” Joseph Smith taught, “is in the likeness of that which is heavenly.” That which is earthly, therefore, only expresses a greater reality. And it was this latter reality which Josiah personally experienced. But, to return to my oldest son’s question: Why? Why does one climb a mountain? According to René Daumal, the reason one climbs a mountain is: “Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.” The point was well made by Randall L. Hall, therefore, when he observed how: “The scriptures contain inspiring accounts of prophets receiving grand, expansive visions. Generally these visions were received away from the noise, distractions, and challenges of everyday life in the tops of mountains.”
I think Josiah was well and truly clear of such distractions when he made his own brief retreat to the mountaintop, and there saw clearer, no doubt, than ever he did before. He returned home from the hospital on Christmas Eve, a living Christmas miracle, and still remains speechless, as are those, generally, who hear of his story for the first time. But his very name is enough to say what his family would be likely to tell you he would want to say, were his tongue to be loosed this hour, as the literal meaning of “Josiah” is “healed by God.”